School Budgets Pass Across Vermont

(Host) Vermont voters have strongly approved local school budgets
all across the state.

Only
three budgets were defeated on Town Meeting Day - that's the lowest number in
decades.

VPR's Bob Kinzel reports:

(Kinzel) A
number of school officials were nervous as they approached Town Meeting Day.

They
knew that overall spending on education actually declined by one percent this
year and there had been little vocal opposition to local budgets but they were
concerned that some budgets would still be defeated because of the downturn in
the economy.

It
turns out they didn't need to worry. 246 towns passed their school budgets and
just 3 did not. Steve Dale is the
executive director of the Vermont School Boards Association.

(Dale) "It was a great day for the passage of
school budgets and I think it reflects the tremendously hard work of school
board members all over the state of Vermont to grapple
with extraordinary difficult economic times we're in the midst of."

(Kinzel)
The consolidation of some school districts was discussed in a number of
communities and five towns in the Addison Northwest district all voted to form
a larger district.

Dale
says his group supports these consolidation efforts as long as they're done on
a voluntary basis.

(Dale) "We're strongly supportive of the local
communities having these discussions. We're very opposed to some kind of a
consolidation mandate that's going to suddenly create 12 school districts or 40
school districts in the state of Vermont - because it totally ignores local
realities and could really undermine the quality of education over the long
run."

(Kinzel)
Municipal budgets also fared well on Town Meeting. Steve Jeffrey is the
executive director of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. He has yet to find
a budget that was rejected.

(Jeffrey) "It looks like the select boards for the
most part were in touch with and in line with the expectations of their
taxpayers. And it looks like we have municipal budgets with which to operate
and provide services for the coming year."

(Kinzel)
But Jeffrey says it's likely that some towns balanced their budgets by putting
off maintenance expenses.

(Jeffrey) "I would expect that one of things that
happened was that the capital expenses, the infrastructure projects may have
been deferred or delayed another year as those are kind of easier to put off
into the future. We will have to deal with those certainly at some point in the
future."